Have you ever wondered why most TVs and monitors were that boxy, almost square
shape until recently? Well, back in the 1890s, Thomas Edison and his assistant
William Kennedy Dixon introduced a device for viewing films called the
kinettocope. This device displayed an image 35 mm wide. Yep, just like film.
Introducing the 4x3 aspect ratio. But
what is an aspect ratio? Well, simply put, an aspect ratio is the ratio of the
width to the height of the image being displayed. So, this same 4x3 ratio was
adopted by many movie and TV producers, making it the standard for decades
because that's how it often goes in the film industry. Once you've adopted a
standard, thanks to the cost, oh my goodness, the cost of the equipment,
it's really hard to run around changing it all the time. And so it wasn't until
the early 1950s that widescreen was conceived. And
this is kind of funny. Originally widescreen, despite having, you know,
obvious benefits, was used as kind of like a marketing gimmick by the movie
studios. Why watch movies on your 4x3 TV
at home when you could watch a widescreen movie at your local theater,
not to mention paying more for it and buying a bag of popcorn while you're at
it? So widescreen ratios became widespread starting in 1953 with a
system called the synorama that used three projectors on a curved screen. Now
unfortunately this proved to be too expensive leading to the development of
single projector widescreen as well as movies produced for flat screens which
is kind of funny because curved displays are now starting to make a comeback.
It's like technology is almost the same as fashion at a certain point. At first,
widescreen films were actually made by removing the top and bottom edges to
create a 15 by9 aspect ratio, very close
to what is seen in most displays today. But later, 20th Century Fox collaborated
with French professor Henry Cretier, who helped to create a special anamorphic
lens that squished a widescreen image
onto regular film. So when played back through a second anamorphic lens, the
resulting image had an aspect ratio of 2.35 to1, almost identical to the modern
21x9ish filming standard. Nowadays, TVs
very commonly used the 16x9 aspect ratio
we've come to know and love, adopted because it could display videos recorded
in other common aspect ratios without a ton of cropping or distortion. So, not
surprisingly, this format was chosen for broadcast HDTV. But the story doesn't
stop there. 16x9 is also the most popular gaming resolution and is used
with popular streaming websites like YouTube, Vessel, Hulu, Netflix, and
countless others. Not watching in 1080p? That's fine because 16x9 was also chosen
because it downscales easily to other resolutions.
But even with the ubiquity of 16 by9, many people still prefer even wider
aspect ratios because they give you a more immersive experience thanks to the
fact that they fill up more of your visual field. Flying through space in No
Man's Sky, driving off-road in Dur 3, or just playing Minecraft in a 21x9 ultra
wide aspect ratio can be deeply engaging. So due to this, more and more
games are starting to support 21 by9 natively, and we're seeing 21 by9
monitors become more common in the
marketplace. So where does this leave us for the future? Well, I wouldn't be
surprised if the market for ultrawide content and hardware continues to grow,
not just because of its immersiveness, but also because of its benefits to
content creators, uh, productivity-minded people, and the
manufacturers of displays who desperately need something new to sell
you. And there's also little doubt that we'll start to see new aspect ratio
standards start to pop up thanks to the rise of VR. The Oculus Rift, for
example, uses a 16x10 aspect ratio to
fill the wearer's field of view as much as possible. I mean, hell, maybe we'll
just make our own special Linus Media Group aspect ratio for optimal Luke
viewing. After all, viewer satisfaction
is what we're all about. Speaking of satisfaction, have you ever wanted to
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